People across upstate New York participated in marches, rallies and protests Thursday for May Day, also known as International Workers’ Day.
This comes as labor leaders are managing a changing landscape for workers, with increases in the cost of living, and the impacts of the Trump administration’s labor policies and funding cuts.
Ithaca, Binghamton and Corning residents celebrated wins for workers in the area, and raised concerns about the future.
‘Fight the power’
Labor leaders and community members were in downtown Ithaca for a May Day march and celebration. Rallygoers gathered at Dewitt Park for speeches and performances.
There has been significant union activity in the Ithaca area over the past year. Multiple unions renegotiated their contracts, some went on strike.
Cornell Graduate Students United, the union that represents graduate student workers at the university, won its first contract earlier this year.
Maggie Foster was one of the bargaining members that secured the deal. She said when she thinks about May Day, she thinks about worker power.
“It means working together to stand up against injustices, and it means standing side by side in coalition with people who are different from me and people who aren't in the same industry as I am, but ideally working together to fight the power,” Foster said.
A few Ithaca unions are currently in the midst of negotiations. One of them is the Ithaca Teachers Association.
Aurora Rojer is the union’s secretary.
“I'm a history teacher, so I teach my students about the history of May Day, about how unions formed to resist horrible working conditions, but also horrible societal conditions, and how unions have won us so many things, like the eight-hour workday and the weekend,” she said.
The union is currently negotiating for better family leave policies, more time to prepare for their classes during the workday, and wage increases to help match Ithaca’s rising cost of living.
Rojer said she is proud to be in a union, and is particularly grateful for its protections at this current moment in history.
She said a recent negotiating win for the union is an assurance that the district will protect educators whose curriculum includes “controversial” subjects, like racism, climate justice and gender.
“We are all really proud to work at a social justice-oriented district that really cares about things like racial justice,” Rojer said. “That's not something that the current federal administration cares about, and in fact, they would like to punish teachers for doing that.”
The Trump administration has tried to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in schools and has promised to go after what he calls “radical indoctrination.”
Many rally attendees carried signs protesting recent Trump administration actions, like cuts to federal funding for science research, the firing of federal workers and aggressive deportations.
‘Blood, sweat and tears’
Binghamton residents, labor leaders and activists marked May Day as well, gathering for a rally in the city’s downtown.
A crowd assembled at the Peacemaker’s Stage and along the Court Street Bridge, holding signs and chanting slogans. They criticized recent funding cuts by the Trump administration, and efforts to revoke collective bargaining rights for federal workers.
Binghamton resident Debra Wilson said she came to the rally to protest recent cuts by the federal government, including the elimination of funding for the AmeriCorps program, which has impacted local nutrition, overdose prevention, and community garden programs. She said she has voted for Republicans and Democrats, and sees the backlash to funding cuts as nonpartisan.
“I'm out here because I very much dislike the behaviors and the attitude. I'm a retired pastor, and to have the Christian community, the fundamental Christian community, follow [Trump] is so against every teaching in the Gospel,” Wilson said. “I have little grandchildren I want to see grow up with freedoms and with rights, and I'm seeing it being taken away right before my very eyes.”
Barb Mullen is co-leader of Indivisible Binghamton, which organized the rally. She said the group chose to gather at the Peacemaker’s Stage because it commemorates the deaths of 31 workers at the Binghamton Clothing Company fire in 1913. She said worker safety protections are “under attack.”
“We have a responsibility to remain in solidarity with labor as the current administration continues to, by executive order, cancel collective bargaining, fire federal employees who are unionized and ignore their civil service rights,” Mullen said.
Brendan McGovern is president of the Binghamton chapter of United University Professions, a union which represents faculty and staff at Binghamton University. He is also an officer at the Broome County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.
McGovern referenced efforts to revoke collective bargaining rights for federal employees and rollbacks to worker protections.
“These rights were fought for with blood, sweat and tears,” McGovern said. “And we're out here to make sure that those rights are sustained, the rights to employment, the rights to a fair wage, the rights to weekends. People are losing their jobs.”
Broome County Republican Chairman Benji Federman responded to the May Day protests and rallies in a statement released Thursday, calling them “divisive.”
“These protests are nothing more than an attempt to score political points and distract from Kathy Hochul's affordability crisis as Southern Tier families and businesses pocket less money,” Federman wrote. “Local Democrats and their out-of-touch allies should put down the sloppy handmade signs and work honestly with local Republicans to make life better for the people who live here."
'Self-serving billionaires'
Hundreds of people showed up Thursday evening inn Downtown Corning, for a rally organized by the Indivisible Elmira-Corning chapter.
“The Trump administration has reduced workers’ wages, made workplaces less safe, threatened workers’ retirement savings by destabilizing the global economy, and gutted government offices that administer fundamental programs covering millions of people in the United States like Social Security and Medicare," Louise Richardson with Indivisible Elmira-Corning wrote in an email statement. "Hard working Americans deserve a government that respects and supports them, not a handful of self-serving billionaires.
There were many people from around the area who spoke during the rally about labor policy issues within the Trump administration as well as tariff concerns.
Local small business owner Dany Hindycz spoke to the crowd during the rally. In an email to WSKG, he said that in his particular business of tabletop games, there is a long lead time to create and launch a new product. He said his latest project was ordered last fall—two months before the elections and with no consideration of imposed tariffs on foreign markets exporting to the U.S.
He said his company, DPH Games Inc. has three pallets of product sitting at a factory with no way to afford the tens of thousands of dollars in additional costs to retrieve them.
According to Hindycz, there is no infrastructure in the U.S. for the mass production of tabletop games such as those he creates and sells at his shop in Corning. His products currently come from China.
“The chaotic manner in which the tariffs were implemented make it virtually impossible to plan,” said Hindycz.
He said companies like his were unable to pivot because there was no advanced warning about the tariffs.
“Board games are a microcosm of how virtually every small business operates,” said Hindycz. “We are currently at a standstill. We aren't ordering anything due to the unpredictability, which means lost sales for our suppliers."
Hindycz added that he would like the Trump administration to know that if they “believe tariffs will work, implement them with a coherent plan in place.”
For now, his company is honoring its current obligations but “beyond that, all projects are on hold.”
Speaker, Tanya Oliver a Public Employees Federation representative said that unions are under attack at the federal level.
She provided the following statement: “We know that union jobs are safer jobs. Unions help workers to fight for health and safety standards on the job. New York State workers provide critical services to our communities, that if lost would truly hurt the community as a whole.”
Other speakers included Lyndsie Guy, a library advocate and John Johnston, a retired Social Security claims representative and Social Security advocate.
Citizens for a Better Southern Tier provided support for the event.